Whether it's a digital 'this' or a cyber 'that,' the progress of technology has seen its implementation in just about all of our major industries. We can expect digital transformation in higher education to be no different.
The accumulation of data in the college setting, plus better hardware and software for putting it to work, means the education community can now make better decisions, retain and educate students with greater success and position themselves for growth in a world of changing demographics, economics and environmental concerns. Here’s a look at digital transformation in higher education, and how it is improving it.
There are two very big (and very old) problems with the communal learning environment — the classroom — that technology is slowly helping us solve. They are as follows:
Artificial intelligence is already helping to bring both of these shortcomings of traditional education back into balance. But how?
Because colleges and universities increasingly use digital platforms to present course materials and facilitate exams, AI services could easily interface with these dashboards to provide professors and other faculty with detailed and highly useful information. This data can cover how each pupil is advancing and where different students might ‘branch off’ from the rest — in terms of their aptitudes and interests — and into other related fields and disciplines.
It may sound complicated, but the Research behind it is anything but: Researchers have long observed that in a “standardized” learning environment, individual students will interpret and apply the same material in different ways, in real-time, and apply it to their own specific fields of study.
In other words, an AI platform could help tailor a civics course so that it applies to both accountants-in-training as well as civil engineers. It could then plot a course to accreditation for both types of learners. Most importantly, it will ensure each Student receives the information that’s most relevant to their personal studies and that adapts to their style and pace of learning.
Student retention can be a problem at small and large universities alike. You’ll find rather few colleges with retention rates below 60 percent, but that doesn’t change the fact that many of them have a steep hill to climb to match the schools with the best knack for retention.
The good news is, schools everywhere these days have a great deal of data already at their fingertips. It’s helping apply data science to the problem of seeking out and marketing to potential high-caliber students, matching them with schools and aid packages that make sense for their socioeconomic background and generally ensuring the entire on-boarding experience is a pleasant one.
